AMD Announces New Threadripper Core, Reveals Launch Date

AMD has been trickling information about Threadripper piece-by-piece over the last few months, ensuring that the topic stays fresh and keeps people interested. This weekend, the company finally released some significant details about Threadripper and its plans for the platform long-term.

We’ve created a slideshow with some of the most important data on performance and overall product positioning against Intel. Click to enlarge each slide in a new window.

Overall, AMD is gunning pretty hard for Intel with Threadripper, setting up one of the most interesting comparisons between the two companies’ HEDT (High End DeskTop) platforms that we’ve ever seen. Almost all of the CPUs launch on August 10 with one exception, which debuts on August 31.

Click to enlarge.

The newly-announced 1900X is an eight-core/16-thread processor identical to Ryzen 7, but on Threadripper’s platform. Like Intel, AMD is offering a chip identical to its already-launched products as a less-expensive way to step into the Threadripper ecosystem. There is, however, a significant difference between what AMD is shipping and what Intel did with its Kaby Lake X-Core processors. Intel’s HEDT Kaby Lake chips are limited to two memory channels and 16 PCIe lanes, even though the X299 platform can handle significantly more than that.

AMD, in contrast, keeps the 1900X at parity with the 16-core 1950X and the 12-core 1920X. All of AMD’s Threadripper CPUs are also unlocked, soldered, and overclockable, though I wouldn’t necessary count on getting great OC results. We’ve already seen that Zen’s sweet spot for clocks versus power consumption is closer to 3GHz than 4GHz. Overclockers have also reported varying results with Ryzen 7 1800X, since once you start overclocking you turn off a number of power management features that are integrated on-die. Given these factors, it’ll take some testing to figure out where the sweet spot is between OC performance and core count. Generally speaking, the higher a CPU’s core count, the less overclocking headroom you can expect to have.

Officially, the 1900X is just $ 50 more expensive than the Ryzen 7 1800X, though we’ve seen Ryzen 7 CPUs on sale from a number of vendors in the $ 400 to $ 430 range. The effective price of stepping up to Threadripper could therefore be more like $ 80 – $ 120 depending on how Ryzen 7 prices shift.

Either way, you’ve got the major Threadripper launch coming in 11 days and the 8-core chip debuting by the end of August. AMD hasn’t been a competitor in the $ 1K CPU market for a very long time, so here’s hoping the company still remembers how to deliver a compelling product at these price points.